Police: White van seen in 3 child-luring tries

Monday's alleged attempted luring of a 12-year-old girl in Moorestown has something in common with two cases involving Bucks County boys last week:

A white van.

Shortly before 4 p.m. Monday, a male passenger in a dirty, white panel van tried to grab a girl near South Shirley and Beacon Avenues in Moorestown after she refused his request to get in and help look for his son, according to Sgt. Lee Lieber.

She told police the driver was bald, the athletic-looking passenger had a bushy moustache, and both might have been Hispanic, while the van had a windshield crack, a missing mirror on the driver's side, New Jersey plates, and possibly a ladder rack, he said.

"She seems to be a credible witness," he said. Her mother said the girl arrived at home breathless with a scraped knee and "looked like a ghost."

"I don't recall anything of this nature within the past five years" in Moorestown, he said.

On Thursday, a 14-year-old boy was approached by an older white man in a white work van with a ladder rack at Fifth and Market Streets in Perkasie, according to the Allentown Morning Call.

The afternoon before in Sellersville, two boys were offered lollipops by an older white man in a white van on Nanlyn Avenue, the report said.

Those two cases were probably unrelated to Moorestown's, Lieber said.

"Males appeared to be intended victims there, and there was only one person in the vehicle," he said.

Still, Moorestown was not discounting the possibility of a connection, he said, adding he knew of no other recent cases in the region.

In western Pennsylvania's Butler County on Sept. 28, a girl complained about a man in a green van, but police determined he simply startled her when he stopped to close a sliding door that became ajar.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.